Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison

"Just from the subtitle and description, we expected a harrowing story of the author’s imprisonment, and perhaps an indictment of censorship, but this memoir is also an erudite exploration of the power of literature, an appreciation of Arabic novels and texts, and a rumination on language. It’s a very literary memoir. Rotten Evidence is also laugh-out-loud funny. Ahmed Naji’s distinctive voice is so strong in this book, thanks to Katharine Halls’ brilliant translation. Naji has an amazing ability to crack wise even in the face of oppression, pointing out the ironies of his captors’ illogic, pettiness, and lack of intellectual rigor as well as the indignities of prison life. That doesn’t sound at all funny, but Naji’s observations are witty and bold and sometimes just hilarious. Ultimately, Rotten Evidence is about the power of literature as a form of self-liberation, a way to imagine freedom for the mind even when the body is imprisoned. Yes. The committee didn’t know that the NBCC’s Sandrof Award would be given to the American Library Association this year when we were discussing Naji’s memoir, but the themes of censorship clearly resonated with everyone. It is a book that speaks to the power of literature to transform minds and lives. The fascist forces in the U.S. who are trying to ban books from public libraries and schools across the country share a lot in common with the fundamentalist censors in Egypt. They are all petty and small-minded people, fearful of anything they do not understand, and whose anti-humanistic abuses of power are not only oppressive to the communities they seek to erase from literature, but they are also a danger to the ability of any given society to flourish. Rotten Evidence is a memoir that speaks truth to power across many kinds of borders."